BSA306, Researching Marvelous Designer software, 21 February, 2017

Blog post #700!  Whoo whoo!


What if my theoretical question relates to Marvelous Designer and the making of costumes using the software?  I could also relate it back to making merchandise to support an intellectual property.

Large-scale garment manufacturing operations have left most western countries where the cost of human labour and environmental safety cannot compete with the low production costs of Asian countries.  Neither the abuses of workers and environmental damage to Asia nor the effect of the loss of so many jobs to the communities of the west will be discussed in this paper.  Rather, the focus will be on preserving what jobs and careers in the garment industry still do exist with the application of relevant computer-aided software and hardware.

Costume shops of various sizes in colleges and universities that offer performing arts degrees do the best that they can with limited budgets, staffs and ever-increasing workloads.  Before the producers and administrators that run those programs find a way to connect with factories in Asia to increase their bottom lines at the expense of the costume shops, I propose to find a way to bring old and new technology methods of garment construction together to keep  jobs local.

 In theory, a costume designer or technician could build their characters and clothe them on the computer, input the actor's measurements, and then pass the completed patterns on to the garment stitchers for construction.  I will explore the workings of the software program Marvelous Designer and conduct practical experiments to test how accurate this 3D modeling software is at producing patterns.  Some experiments will involve garments for humans but my primary interest is in bringing unusual costumes, like mascots, quickly and reliably into the real world.  I will model one of the characters from my kid's TV show in Maya, import it into Marvelous Designer and make adjustments to the design, then export a pattern which I can use to make the character out of fabric and foam.

http://www.marvelousdesigner.com/


*Update*
Rachel has suggested that this line of inquiry be reserved for Advanced Animation.  I will now shift over to researching 3D printing and it's contemporary practices in animation and film.  I would like to look at it from a view towards mascot and puppetry, too.